Carter Wrenn
Gary Pearce
They’re Fed Up
The instantly iconic front page of The Daily Tar Heel tells you three things about their generation: They’re fed up with gun violence and school lockdowns They’re fed up with politicians who protect guns, not people They’re so fed up they printed the text “GUYS I’M SO FUCKING SCARED” in big, bold red type. That…
PPP to the Rescue
I certainly don’t begrudge the Raleigh consultants who took PPP relief during the pandemic. If they’d gone under, the economic consequences could have been devastating for certain Capital City watering holes, fine dining establishments and upscale clothing stores. Danielle Battaglia revealed the deals in The News & Observer (“How US allowed pandemic relief to go…
St. Paul to Titus
To rescue a church at war with itself Paul wrote Titus: ‘When a man stirs up division warn him once, warn him a second time, then have nothing more to do with him.’ (Titus, 3:10) Titus was from Greece. The divided church was in ancient Crete. Today political civil wars rule the news – you…
Fight Back. Vote.
Since Monday’s shooting at UNC, the gun lobby’s flacks, flunkies and apologists have been furiously tweeting/X’ing to justify inaction. One state legislator said “it’s a mental health and woke society issue.” A long-time Republican operative saw a dark link between Covid, Wuhan and the UNC lab. Another, mightily offended that Congressman Jeff Jackson said “our…
Mark Misquoted?
Pardon back-to-back blogs on Mark Robinson, but he says he was misquoted. By his autobiography. In the 2022 autobiography, “We Are The Majority,” the Republican candidate for governor said K-5 education should focus exclusively on reading, writing and math: “In those grades, we don’t need to be teaching social studies. We don’t need to be…
Governor Bonkers
Way back in the 1970s, Jerry Brown got tagged as “Governor Moonbeam” in California for far-out ideas that turned out far-seeing, like environmental consciousness and the state launching its own space satellite. Mark Robinson would be Governor Bonkers. A HuffPost article, “The Unbelievably Bonkers Conspiracy Theorist Running For Governor Of North Carolina,” collected some of…
Great News About the Economy
One of my favorite reads every week is Dan Barkin’s Tuesday report in the Business North Carolina Daily Digest, for gems like this: “There were 44% fewer manufacturing jobs in our state last year than in 1990. Some of the decline was automation, some of it was due to competition from low-wage countries like China.…
What Matters Most?
Ron DeSantis’ SuperPac told him in the debate he should: 1) ‘Defend Trump’ and 2) ‘Take a sledgehammer to Vivek Ramaswamy.’ That was his political guru’s practical advice. But there’s a more important question. Trump’s convinced Republicans Biden ‘stole the election.’ During the debate Pence or Christie or Hutchinson may ask Trump: You said 30,000…
Schools Lose This Bet
When North Carolina’s legislature debated whether to start a lottery 20 years ago, one argument overcame concerns about gambling and corruption: All the money would go to public schools. The result was the Education Lottery. Back then, Republicans opposed the lottery – period. They pilloried then-Lt. Governor Bev Perdue for casting the tie-breaking vote to…